Letters of Emily Dickinson

Boston: Roberts Brothers, [ca. 1899] Two volumes bound into one. First edition, second printing, with p. 132 footnote in two lines in Vol. 1, and three footnotes on p. 370 in Vol. 2; in BAL's 4th binding, with tan V cloth. With five illustrations (three in Vol. 1 and two in Vol. 2), including a frontispiece facing the title page of each volume. Publisher's brown cloth, with white paper label printed in black to spine. Good or better, with light wear to spine ends, heavy spotting and toning to spine label, an area of light rubbing to lower portion of spine, Vol. 2 frontispiece detached but present, library stamp to front pastedown, and Brentano's bookseller ticket to rear pastedown. Overall, a very clean copy. BAL 4660. These two volumes contain letters from Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) that span practically her entire writing life - from when she was 14 years old to the final year of her life. Dickinson did not keep a journal, so her letters comprise almost the entirety of her prose writing. In Mabel Loomis Todd's introduction, she writes of how the letters provide a fuller portrait of the often sternly portrayed Dickinson: "...while fully apprehending all the tragic elements in life, enthusiasm and bright joyousness were yet her normal qualities, and stimulating moral heights her native dwelling-place. All this may be glimpsed in her letters, no less full of charm, it is believed, to the general reader, than to Emily Dickinson's personal friends." . First Edition. Hard Cover. Good.